Heartcrossings

Nice article on mid-life crisis that feels very relate-able Midlife essentially becomes a time of double misery, made up of disappointments and evaporating aspirations. Paradoxically, those who objectively have the least reason to complain (e.g. if they have a desirable job) often suffer most. They feel ungrateful and disappointed with themselves particularly because their discontent seems so unjustified – which creates a potentially vicious circle. In the last three years, two of my good friends decided to dump their "desirable" jobs and plunge into the uncertainty of self-discovery, starting their own business and taking large chunks of time to do nothing. When we spoke, I heard them struggle to explain their choice. The fact that they even felt the need to do so is explained by the author  " feel ungrateful and disappointed with themselves particularly because their discontent seems so unjustified".  They are both following their desire for change and no mat...

In The Myth of the Nice Girl , author Fran Hauser has operating definition of "nice". Young women getting into the work-force could benefit from a great deal from it: .. I’m describing a woman who cares deeply about other people and who wants to connect with them, who is guided by a strong sense of values to do the right thing. She is considerate, respectful, and kind. There’s a warmth and magnetism about her that draws people to her side and makes them feel good in her presence. At work, she’s fair, collaborative, and generous. Instead of competing against other women, she elevates them by sharing the credit for a job well done. She has a deep, unshakable confidence that there are plenty of opportunities to go around. Unfortunately, the examples of said niceness she cites right after don't ring particularly genuine. Her anecdotes about women who got ahead in their careers being kind are even more facile. The rest of the advisory is very derivative and I quickly lost ...

Enjoyed reading this short essay on the type of man a woman should try not to fall in love with. From what I have seen in my own life, this is all mostly true even if a bit generalized. The hardest part is the lack of closure when it ends. You learn to live without knowing answers. making peace with your own guilt and wondering if he ever thinks of you. The author has her theory which sounds plausible His willpower and discipline means you will never hear from him again. The linearity of his mind means he will conclude, like a logic game, you were not meant to be. There is a reason why a woman may choose this type of man over and over despite knowing the risks. There is a wonderful mind-expanding quality to the relationship with them, one that acts like a fix, a pick-me-up and makes up for the lack of stimulation in other parts of her life. More importantly these men are and feel safe. If you get hurt in the relationship it was almost certainly not their intent - if anything t...

The volume of waste as evidenced by returned goods in this Forbes story is quite mind-boggling. As a business opportunity it makes perfect sense - the right dots are being connected here. People buy things they don't need and super generous return policies enables buying without deliberation. Our inability to make buying decisions we can live with have no penalty. The retailers have to deal with the deluge of unwanted, unneeded stuff. Their gains by moving stuff out the door fast can be offset by stuff coming right back even if at a slower pace.  The eco-system would never allow for a punitive return policy that would reduce some of this mayhem - whomever implements it will turn into the pariah that customers will not buy from. Yet another example where the consumer is teased by a bad habit to gain competitive advantage until that becomes the new normal. At that point no one actually wins and yet the cycle cannot be broken. Along comes a B-Stock to make the most of a sad mess....

Trying to wrap my head around the concept of platonic parenting . At first blush it seems like two like-minded people getting together to raise a kid as a divorced pair might minus all the feuding, jockeying for control and all-around negativity that post divorce co-parenting often devolves into. Each part of the platonic parenting unit may have a romantic partner of their own to whom this child is not related. That sounds like a hedge against the souring of the primary romantic relationship and the concomitant pain it might bring to the child.  The platonic parents have no reason to tear each other up and destroy the child along the way. So chances the kid will have two parents who love them and work together on child-rearing. Such are the signs of the times we live in. People want to do the right thing as parents - love and protect their kids from harm. Yet, the societal and legal frameworks that govern their ability to do so leaves a lot to be desired. Platonic parenting seems...

Reading this article about medications affecting our brains struck a painfully familiar chord for me. I used to know someone who sounds very much like Patient Five described in this story. Having a medical condition that simply cannot be managed without medication combined with the destructive side-effects of that medication can put in person in horrific trap. In the case of Patient Five, he was fortunate to get his personality back. As the author rightly points out such is not always the case Others have not been so lucky. Over the years, Golomb has collected reports from patients across the United States – tales of broken marriages, destroyed careers, and a surprising number of men who have come unnervingly close to murdering their wives. In almost every case, the symptoms began when they started taking statins, then promptly returned to normal when they stopped; one man repeated this cycle five times before he realised what was going on.

Recently, I stopped by at Micheal's to see if I could find a garden-variety planner for the new year. I was in the area, the need for a planner came to mind so I stepped in. This is not a store I frequent but have visited over the years - specially when J was still in school and needs would arise for various projects. I was struck by the the lack of variety in the assortment in just about every aisle. There used to be a lot more to choose from no matter what you were looking for. Maybe they do more business online these days.  I did not end up finding the planner that met my needs. The shoe store in the same strip-mall was my next stop - again had a very basic requirement that just about any shoe store could fulfill. Was struck by the pricing in the clearance aisles. A remarkable story of decline over the last few visits I have made to this store. Used to be that the clearance items were a good value and often the shelves were half empty. Now everything was fully stocked and the...

Strange thoughts can cross my mind in a hotel bathroom after a long flight. It is that moment when the world fades out in the gathering darkness of a strange city and all that matters is a warm shower before going to bed. The shower is so futuristic that no matter which way you turn the shower head refuses to activate. The water flows into the tub and out of reach, alternating between cold and hot.  I sit on the edge and soak my feet resigned to give up and go to bed grimy from long day. I don't want to call the front desk and present myself an idiot needing help turning on the shower. I wonder if anyone else in this hotel is struggling just as I am. If unlike me they have the courage to ask for help. What separates someone like me from those who can magically grasp the secrets of strange faucets and get them to yield water at will. Am I all alone in this. Events like this take me back to my college days when I was struggling with engineering drawing unlike anyone else I knew. I...

I watched both seasons of You because J referred it to me. Meeting your kid where they are mentally gets harder as they grow older - that's been my experience. Mothers I know who have much older kids tell me that the tide turns and some point it becomes easier once again but the effort to stay connected is on-going and cannot be eased up just because it got harder. A lot of us have raised kids who are vastly different from us as people and the points of intersection don't always lend to deep, meaningful conversation. We may have some common pet peeves, appreciate each other's sense of humor and take interest in the news of the day. That makes for a good chat over coffee but if you want more you need to try harder. In my case, it was watching this show. There is much to think about in terms of what makes a story like this tick with the audience, what makes it binge-worthy, what fears are exaggerated to the point they turn macabre and attention grabbing. Fundamentally, to m...

Trips to San Francisco always turn out interesting for me. In the seat ahead of me was a young man with a support dog in a bow-tie for instance. He was telling people around him that the dog has a sensitive soul and needs to be cuddled when he is nervous. He also a very fussy eater and will not be fed by anyone but him. In the seat next to me was woman who worked the full length of the flight on a sales presentation and I could see her smirk at all of this. I have to admit I could relate to her sentiments - this dog was more in need of support that the human he was purportedly supporting,  Each time I drive into the city, I can't help feelings struck by it's physical beauty - the mountains, the water and also what man made with the this gorgeous piece of land. This time, I found myself wondering how it must feel to arrive in SF, if you had your heart broken here, lost everything that you loved and cherished. Would the amazing weather, the infinitely cheerful sunlight lift yo...

I had not read this very clever and scorching review of The Oxford Murders before watching the movie. The movie is for times when you want to be mentally lazy. This is a movie to doze off, catch up on sleep. If you wake up intermittently (as I did) you will still follow the plot-line. I believe there is a customer need for such cinematic fare as long as people manage their expectations appropriately. But the author of this review was stirred at a much deeper level: Perhaps if I were to say that the film is utterly pathetic vapid awkward boring pig-ignorant pretentious ridiculous patronizing slop, it might stir in you some dim inkling of the depth of uselessness of this toxic piece of cinematographic excrement. But that would be understatement, and I hate to understate. This movie has a badness value that cries out for new numbers to be invented. Ten on a scale of ten is nowhere near enough. Reading his diatribe was way more entertaining than watching the movie itself plus I was glad...

This winter break with J came home, I felt a tremendous need to cook for her - just about anything she missed while away in college. For the first few days she could hardly come up with anything she particularly craved. Not having a wish-list to work through left me feeling a bit lost and even sad. By the end of break, I had started to hear of a few things she did crave. It was a joy and relief to cook for her in a way I don't think I have experienced before. I don't know how many such opportunities I have left before she has her own independent life, doing her own thing.  My overzealous cooking reminded me of some of elderly relatives who have now passed on. When I visited them once in a great while, they made sure I was fed all of my favorite things. I remembered the look of joy on their faces as I ate a meal prepared for me with so much love and attention to detail. I was too naive then to understand the source of their happiness watching me eat. I felt nostalgic for those...

Watching this movie was a delightful experience. The conversations between the cardinal and the Pope are not always friendly but both men are erudite and speak to ideas far bigger than their individual selves. It is a pleasure to be part of these conversations the director imagines they had over time. There are also these moments that bring out the human and fallible in them - be it ordering pizza and Fanta, watching football together or confessing their sins to each other.  Seeing Anthony Hopkins morph from Hannibal to the character of the Pope is as unreal as it is amazing. Though to be fair, I am a unabashed fan and have not seen him in any role that I did not love. Like the average person, the Pope and the cardinal are not always able to do what is absolutely right, stand for what is the inviolable truth. Yet unlike the average person, their actions and lack thereof have consequences that impact over a billion people. It is an oppressive weight to carry on the conscience. Wh...

Learned about the music of Don Shirley after watching a beautiful movie - The Green Book . I had not even heard of this pianist until the movie and will not be able to separate the two now.  Associations between music and cinema can happen in the reverse too. I love the music of Satie for example and hearing the Gnossiennes in the sound track of a movie can produce a strong point of connection, in a story I know and love - like The Painted Veil or one unknown that completely drew me in like Chocolat . The choice of background music might have to do with the experience of watching those movies.  One of my favorite movies ever The Shawshank Redemption used Figaro most unforgettably. 

Each year, the holidays throw up a fair share of surprises for me in the form of connections lost and found. This past year, someone I knew as friend who had suddenly stopped communicating with me, sent me greetings that I could not bring myself to respond to.  There was no specific event that triggered this hiatus in our communication and that made it all the more sad and confusing. If there was anything I had done that could be undone, I would gladly try to make amends. But there was no room for that and I could not fathom what this was all about. We have known each other for a decade now and then suddenly we had turned strangers. I fretted about it on and off for a few months, wondered if I should try to have a conversation - and I did try a few times to no avail. Then finally about three months ago, I decided it was time to move on.  There is a window of opportunity in the relationship between people then things are still pliable. One side would be willing to yield to ...

Recently I found myself looking for a wedding gift for a young couple. The groom is my relative - the bride I have never met. They are starting out in life but seem to have it all - already. Add to that, I don't know them well enough to actually personalize the gift. The process got me thinking about what a wedding gift is meant to be and what I was trying to accomplish with mine. My challenge was not so much in being able to come up with something to give them that they make like, but more about the impact I was looking to have through it. I wanted my gift to have meaning and use for them often, bring them joy and in that process I wanted them to think of me in happy context. I was trying to rebuild bridges with a part of the family that has grown distant over the years. In addition, it needed to express my personality and not be just more of the same that they may have received from other members of the family - I was looking to stand out from the crowd, I wanted the bride'...

Interesting run-down of product flops of the past decade. Particularly dislike the Fake AI stuff that is making its insidious way into everything these days  AI had a hell of a decade. But lurking in the shadow of its success like a knock-off Gooci handbag or a pair of Abibas sneakers was the squalid phenomenon of Fake AI. Companies saw the hype and misunderstanding that surrounded artificial intelligence and thought to themselves: “A-ha, we can sell that.” They produced AI toothbrushes, AI smart beds, AI alarm clocks and dishwashers, promising that “advanced machine learning algorithms” would adapt to the problems in our life, while cranking out the same old products relying on IF/OR functions. In short: they sold a lot of tat. A lot sadder news was about the genetic testing for risk of certain diseases and how trusted the results only to be told it was not quite so set in stone as they had been lead to believe. Over the years, I have learned to be very skeptical about resear...

There is a stretch of the highway from where I live into downtown, where it is impossible to look straight ahead in the morning sun. This also happens to be peak commuting hour. The traffic slows down to a crawl as people inch their way out. It always struck me as odd that the highway was not designed to account for this problem that plagues the community every morning.  The brightness of LED headlights this article talks about is a familiar one too. My adaptation strategies for the sunlight problem has been avoidance - by way of leaving early or taking a detour through the city streets. I am sure others are doing similar things. If the car behind me is blinding me with its headlights, I try to change lanes if I can. I wonder if the impacts of such random behavior can be factored into traffic simulations like this one,

I love the Carl Sagan quote "If you want to make apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe". So much conveyed in so few words. At a very trite level, it gives me comfort that I cannot bake apple pie from scratch - it's too much work and the results are unpredictable.  But there are other ways I have thought about what Sagan's quote means for me. It has crossed my mind often while cooking a meal, specially one that people loved and complimented me on. Nature did over 99.999% of the work and I did the rest. In that utterly negligible balance, we can have so much variety, so many ways to succeed and fail. What we put on the table may comfort our loved ones or not.That is  also where Michelin star chefs leave the rest of us in the dust, a certain grandma has a recipe without which no holiday meal is complete for the family.  On dark days, I have thought about how limited our scope of play is in the universe - we are no more than insignificant bacteria...

Having J home for winter break was a great. Among other things, I felt that the universe gives us way more second chances than we deserve with kids. Their love is generous and for that I am grateful. It was a delicate balancing act learning how to be a mother to an adult, living her own life and on the cusp of independence. There is a part of her that enjoys the life she left behind here, being a baby and then there is the other that is her own woman.  My job was to learn to balance the two, support only gently and left her fly far and away. The training wheels have come off and J is on her own. I am glad to be a friend and sounding-board to her in years to come - that will be my main role in her life. But she still loves the way I put her breakfast together - her favorite meal of the day. That may well be the strongest connection between the life she left behind and what is to follow. Each morning she may take a few extra minutes to make herself a breakfast she enjoys and in t...

Love this idea of an in-home vision test ki t. If they close the loop with ordering the lenses and frame all within a single flow, would be even better. But definitely a step in the right direction as the current system makes no sense. I like just about everything here except the overzealous data collection. Convenience and common-sense solutions do not have to come at the cost of privacy loss and data grabbing. I am more in favor of a local-first approach. This product could offer the customer all the benefits and not latch on to all the data by default. In the least, it should be upto the individual to decide if they would like their vision data shared or not. This becomes even more relevant as other parties enter the mix to create more comprehensive solutions for the customer. If you had no say-so in the data being collected, it is unlikely you will have any in the data sharing arrangements either.

I hope the trend cited in this NYT article on holiday gift giving is here to stay. The people in my life that I exchange gifts with are generally hard to shop for. No one has anything they specifically need or want, most would be happy not to receive any gifts at all. It is the thought counts way more than the actual gift itself.  J for instance takes great pleasure in hearing about the process - why I chose what I did, when I did first think about it and so on. The gift itself could be of very trivial monetary value but the story makes it special. I am much like them myself. It takes time and thought for me to decide what to get - almost a meditative process. I may be mulling over an idea for a gift off and on until something inspires me.  Recently I found a book I had read decades ago in a second-hand bookstore. As I leafed through it, reliving the nostalgia, I realized it would make the perfect gift for my young friend L. She is starting out her independent life after ...

Watched Marriage Story recently and felt a great sense of empathy for both characters. This was a very fortunate couple in that they are both fundamentally decent people who wish each other well despite their individual failings. They could have been great friends but are just not compatible as a couple. Most importantly they love their kid equally. That is a lot of positives to have under the circumstances. But in the cauldron of marriage, without the chemistry that keeps couples together in the worst times, people devolve into the worst versions of themselves. A bad marriage is corrosive and can turn the nicest people (as we see in this movie) quite awful. The story ends on a generally hopeful note - no one has been completely destroyed, each person is thriving in their career and the kid is okay. Much like daybreak after a stormy night. In real life, that stormy night could run many years and decades and leave a wasteland in its wake. The kids are not always okay - very far fro...

I have always gone a little overboard with the idea that a parent must not mentally entrap their kid by way of solicitude. With that comes the risk that kid will fly far and away mentally never to return. I was willing to take such risk in the service of my cause.  When J came home for winter break, we had long conversations about all kinds of things, For several days we stayed up late into the night talking.  Our relationship felt equal - I saw my baby as a young woman I was lucky to have as a friend. She told me she enjoyed our conversations. The experience was much like after having held my breath under water, coming to the surface. 

Reading this article about the fast disappearing landline phone and what it means to share as a family rang a familiar bell. My maternal grandfather's claim to fame in his humble Kolkata neighborhood was that he was the first to acquire a phone in the early 50s. Though most of us who heard the stories of his "greatness",  were born well past a time where having a landline phone could confer such incredible social status.  The stories we heard were pretty hysterical. The ring of the phone was so loud and the living quarters so tight that an incoming call was heard three doors away as was the conversation that followed. Grandpa spoke loud to begin with but his decibel level went up in proportion to the caller's geographical distance from him.  Some peeved neighbors accused him of being a braggart and showing off his possession of a phone to those less fortunate. Notwithstanding, the phone served as the contact number for just about every neighbor in reasonable radi...

J like many, is a Godfather fan and watching the trilogy with her a couple of years ago was a great experience. So watching The Irishman alone, I missed her. She would have loved every bit of it. The movie is everything you expect of  Scorsese - polished, memorable and taut. I particularly admired how perfectly every character was cast - down to people who appear only in crowd scenes.  Watching the movie, I wondered what it was about gangster movies that make them such crowd-pleasers. The fans of The Godfather abound in their diverse millions for instance - it does not take any particular "type" of person to like it. Interesting essay on the appeal of gangster movies and how Hollywood made them into modern day Robin Hoods  The Corleones, and all screen gangsters, were good people. They never killed people out of personal hatred. It was all “just business.” They loved their wives, were good family men, raised kids, went to church and respected each other. They were m...

Interesting article on winners and losers in retail . This past holiday season, I happened to be at an outlet mall. Last time, it was the year J was born to get her a picture with the mall Santa - an experience she thoroughly disliked as the pictures show. That was ofcourse a long time ago and Amazon was still a new kid on the retail block and waves of store closings was not the norm.  The mall was where all the action was - not only was the volume of traffic very high, people also stuck around until they had worked through their list. The volume of shopping was a spectacular sight to behold - specially to people like me who were new to the country. The mall Santa was a very busy man - the whole place was a hive of human activity and the holiday music served only as ambient noise. This time, it was hard to tell it was the holiday season judging by the size of the crowds - they did not seem to be buying too much either. Likely, these were show-rooming. I was there with my friend...

Loved some lines from this poem I read while waiting for a friend at a coffee shop A particular blur attended my mind from end to end. These feelings of futurelessness. To free fall into it. It feels like winter, the light overcast and the day lit up from within. To find a line in it. The feeling of futurelessness as the poet describes it is probably a very individual and specific feeling borne out of their life experiences and what lies ahead of them. I can so relate to the sense of free fall into it. This would be the first time in my life where what I do will not be in service of others and their causes - including those who I love more than life itself. That feels a lot like losing the tethers that kept me constrained but also grounded. So it does resemble a free fall and one in which there is no knowing when and how one may land. 

The graffiti painting drone could also paint over the ugly ones that no one likes. On the rides from airport to the city downtown specially in public transportation, I must have seen the most prolific graffiti work. You get a taste of the local underbelly, its specific peeves with those in positions of power and authority. Sometimes there could be political statements and inside jokes.  There is a certain level of sameness in the most common style of graffiti which brings nothing new to the party. If creativity and artistic flair were to be rewarded, then the boring stuff could be painted over by the graffiti drone. clearing the space for something that grabs attention and hopefully stimulates a conversation and even change. If graffiti should be considered a type of art installation in the public space, perhaps a public vote should determine which one stay and which ones get painted over.

This sounds like useful technology - warning distracted pedestrians about oncoming traffic to prevent fatalities. Reminds me of a presentation I saw recently by a transportation researcher was talking about designing a perfect driving system that recognizes that people behave in ways that are not in their best interests. Notwithstanding, the perfect system is one that works around these flawed and incorrigible human beings to prevent them from doing their worst.  So in this case, the headphones will allow the pedestrian to tool around town like a zombie oblivious to their surroundings and help them not walk straight into a car driving by. Over time, such perfect systems will get smarter and proportionately dumb us down. This is just like bad parenting where you enable kids by not setting any reasonable expectations for them and demanding basic performance. We all know how that turns out both for the kid and the parent in question. Imagining that scenario play out societal l...

Beautiful lines from the poem Burning The Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye So much of any year is flammable,    lists of vegetables, partial poems.    Orange swirling flame of days,    so little is a stone. Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,    an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.    I begin again with the smallest numbers. There is something incredibly uplifting about starting at one.